FOT Forum
FOT Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: DennisFromHalifax on October 19, 2011, 01:51:49 AM
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Im a huge Kinks fan and never understood why everyone loved this album. But as im listening to it right now, it just clicked, i get it! Anyone else a fan or this album or just The Kinks in general ???
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Im a huge Kinks fan and never understood why everyone loved this album. But as im listening to it right now, it just clicked, i get it! Anyone else a fan or this album or just The Kinks in general ???
Weird, that was the album that made the Kinks "click" for me. I was exclusively a Beatles fan in highschool and had only heard the Kinks early songs and wrote them off because, like I said, I thought I only had time for the Beatles. Then I heard Village Green and things changed greatly.
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It's now my favorite Kinks album by a large margin, but it never really clicked for me until I visited England in 2000. Hearing those songs while driving through little towns with village greens was when everything sort of joined up for me.
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I like VGPS. But the album that turned me into a Kinks fan was Muswell Hillbillies. While it's less ambitious than Village Green, I think it has better songs.
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Im a huge Kinks fan and never understood why everyone loved this album. But as im listening to it right now, it just clicked, i get it! Anyone else a fan or this album or just The Kinks in general ???
Hell yes! I'm intrigued: you were a huge Kinks fan before but you didn't like this album. What did you like better than this before Village Green kicked in? I didn't really start getting into the Kinks until I heard this from start to fin about 20 years ago. Before that I assumed they were all 70s arena rock or chugging riffing like "You Really Got Me". Then after I listened to "Something Else" and that was really it, I felt like I was in London in 1966.
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This and "Something Else" have been my fav Kinks albums for a long time. 60's psychedelic rock at it's finest.
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I always enjoyed The Kinks but never considered myself a fan of The Kinks. But then a friend pushed Village Green on me and that's what transformed me. It's one of my favorite albums.
I know their later era output is hit or miss. And I know that "Best Of" albums are inherintly lame. But Come Dancing is something that pops up on my iPod a ton.
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I gotta say Arthur is still my favorite Kinks album
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It's kind of arena rock but the One from the Road live double-album has stayed one of my favorites.
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It's kind of arena rock but the One from the Road live double-album has stayed one of my favorites.
Saw them on that tour in an arena.
Dave was on fire.
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I gotta say Arthur is still my favorite Kinks album
Arthur is my favorite, as well, and I agree that Muswell Hillbillies is right there with Arthur and Village Green. As for Village Green itself, "Phenomenal Cat" is the only song that keeps it from being perfect.
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I was big on Face To Face first and then Something Else...and of course those amazing singles..kinda lost it after the early 70s...good run of 5 star albums though in the mid 60s til the early 70s.
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I just love that album. It's pretty much a perfect driving record, especially when you're on long stretches of open road. It's definitely one of my personal favorites, and I've been listening to it quite a bit lately. Timely thread!
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I gotta say Arthur is still my favorite Kinks album
Arthur is my favorite, as well, and I agree that Muswell Hillbillies is right there with Arthur and Village Green. As for Village Green itself, "Phenomenal Cat" is the only song that keeps it from being perfect.
also the song Monica, though to be fair it is the next to last song. And who's idea was it to put Steam Powered Train before Big Sky? I always skip that song. Just cant wait for the epic rock of Big sky
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Regardless of your favorite, it seems inarguable that Face to Face through Muswell Hillbillies is an unprecedented hot streak. Even the singles, b-sides, and outtakes from the era are very high quality, so the reissue CDs which feature some of those tracks are worth getting. Songs like Days, King Kong, Big Black Smoke, and Dead End Street are better than some of the best songs by any artist you'd care to name, and none of them even made it onto an album.
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MUSWELL HILLBILLIES is my favorite. It just feels to me like the Kinks' most successful marriage of concept and songs. VILLAGE GREEN and ARTHUR are always fighting it out for second place.
VILLAGE GREEN, though it has some of the best pop songs ever written, kinda falls apart near the end for me. Replace "Monica" and "People Take Pictures Of Each Other" with "Lavender Hill" and "Days," and you'd have a perfect album, IMO.
ARTHUR, though it rocks and I love the suite-like quality of its best songs ("Shangri-La" is THE Kinks song), suffers from being the first of the Kinks' "theatrical" albums. Ray's singing in wacky "character" voices, the music hall influence really starts to shine through, etc. All this is counterbalanced with some pretty fierce rockin' ("Brainwashed," "Mr. Churchill Says"), but this album is essentially the Kinks planting the seeds of their own destruction.
But yeah, best band ever.
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Saw them on that tour in an arena.
Dave was on fire.
My first concert was the Kinks on the "Give The People What They Want" tour. New Haven Coliseum! 1982? 1983?
Anyway, I bought VGPS last year and heard it then for the first time. Up until then I had only owned super-early and late-arena-rock Kinks. VGPS is currently my favorite Kinks album, but that may change as I start buying the 70's-era Kinks albums.
Someone also put Waterloo Sunset on a mix for me once. That remains my favorite (or should that be "favourite"?) Kinks song.
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Perfect pop song = Waterloo Sunset
And I'll third the calls of Muswell Hillbillies as an overlooked classic, probably my favorite at the moment.
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Whats everyones favorite song off of VGPS? Mine right now is Steam Powered Trains, but i could pick pretty much any of them.
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Whats everyones favorite song off of VGPS? Mine right now is Steam Powered Trains, but i could pick pretty much any of them.
Big Sky is the obvious high point for me, but I really love Johnny Thunder as well.
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Whats everyones favorite song off of VGPS? Mine right now is Steam Powered Trains, but i could pick pretty much any of them.
Right now, "Sitting By The Riverside."
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Whats everyones favorite song off of VGPS? Mine right now is Steam Powered Trains, but i could pick pretty much any of them.
I can't pick a single track but "Do You Remember Walter", "Picture Book", and "Johnny Walter" coming 2, 3, and 4 after opening with title song sealed the deal.
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"Johnny THUNDER"
Damn my typo.
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Village Green, Something Else and Arthur are three good albums with classic tracks, but I think they are the only band that I can call one of my favorites, probably top 10 for me, without having a classic 5 star album.
It shocks me that there hasn't been a movie made about the Kinks. The band could have been as big as The Beatles but they were banned from touring the US right when the British Invasion was happening.
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Big Sky for me. Its a high mark for psychdelic rock, almost Who-esque in its drum guitar attack. Then the spoken word verses just take it to a different realm. What they were doing at the time was on a totally different level. Top tier British psych (if you can call it psych)
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Whats everyones favorite song off of VGPS? Mine right now is Steam Powered Trains, but i could pick pretty much any of them.
"Animal Farm" puts me in a very good mood.
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"Starstruck" is a close second.
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"People Take Pictures of Each Other" or "Village Green"
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"Animal Farm"
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"Picture Book". Always thought "Wicked Annabella" was ahead of its time, too.
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Too long, music nerds!
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"Steam Powered Trains" and "Big Sky" for me. I agree totally w/what a few of you said about their awesome run of albums - but that Arthur is sorta a bad sign of the things to come. It's the same thing that sinks Sgt Pepper on songs like Mr Kite ... the British fascination with old timey dance hall shit. (Did the Stones fall prey to this? Can't remember now. I know Mick Jagger liked to pretend he was Southern.) What's weird is I think one of the first things I clued into on the Kinks was their 80s comeback Come Dancing stuff, and then I put that together with what I heard on the radio like Lola, All Day, & You Really Got Me.
Also, I don't think alternate personae really works ever in the crazy rock and roll music.
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I agree with the dance hall comment...I wonder if Ray Davies and John Lennon or whoever even listened to old timey dance hall tunes....i dont get it myself, i like it in small doses, but thats about it. Im really getting into Muswell Hillbillies now that a few of you have mentioned it here, alot of a great tunes but once again, a few old timey tunes i can do without. That being said, thats part of The Kinks sound i suppose and what makes them unique.
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Yes! Glad somebody finally said it: British music hall was one strain that never should have been hoovered up by rock eclecticism. I have a hard time forgiving Paul McCartney for this. While the Kinks did it pretty well because Ray and Dave were geniuses, my idea of the Kinks really is still "You Really Got Me" and "Til the End of the Day." I can think of only one time the Stones succumbed to it: "Something Happened to Me Yesterday," which I kinda like anyway.
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I've been playing Muswell Hillbillies a bit lately. I appreciate it, but can't get behind it like VGPS. To me it sounds like an entitrely different band. It's def. a super-boozy record, you can smell the whiskey on those songs. VGPS smells like Earl Grey tea!
Oh, and Dolenz WISHES he could do the opening fill on the title track.
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Did the Stones fall prey to this? Can't remember now.
On with the show - THE ROLLING STONES - Their satanic majesties request (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0NRD41Yw2s#)
Does this count?
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I thought of that, but it's like they wrote it with a British music hall in mind and then Brian Jones said "hey, let's make this sound like it's in a Moroccan souk" or something.
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"Between the Buttons" is great and "Satanic Majesties" definitely has some cool moments ("Citadel" and "2000 Light Years from Home" get a little bit proto-metal).
Keef is kinda dismissive of this era in his autobio, but what does he know?
But anyway, I guess y'all were talking about the Kinks, so carry on ...
Oh wait, you know what though? It'd be kinda cool if the Stones decided to re-invent themselves as a corny-ass Music Hall band at this late stage in the game. Just write a bunch of new songs in the Vaudeville/Music Hall mode and refuse to play any of the hits.
(It'd be a nice contrast to Mick's pathetic compulsion to tell interviewers that he's been getting into dubstep, or whatever).
But anyway, I guess y'all were talking about the Kinks ...
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Seriously though, what do the Stones have to lose by doing that?? The worst thing that could happen would be another bad review haha They could do pretty much anything at this point and no one would care. We'd laugh but wouldnt care. That new "supergroup" that Jagger is doing now is the worst thing hes ever done i think.
But back to the Kinks...The Great Lost Kinks Album is amazing btw...shouldve been a proper album if you ask me..not a bad tune on it.